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HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/24/2005 PRC MinutesCITY OF DIAMOND BAR MINUTES OF THE PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION STUDY SESSION DIAMOND BAR CENTER — SYCAMORE ROOM 1600 S. GRAND AVENUE FEBRUARY 7, 2005 CALL TO ORDER: Chairman Grundy called the Parks and Recreation Commission Study Session to order at 6:43 p.m. in the Diamond Bar Center Sycamore Room, 1600 S. Grand Avenue, Diamond Bar, California 91765. 1. ROLL CALL: Present: Chairman Dave Grundy, Vice Chairman Nancy Lyons and Commissioners Ling -Ling Chang, Benny Liang, Marty Torres. Staff Present: Bob Rose, Director of Community Services; James DeStefano, Assistant City Manager; Ryan Wright, Recreation Supervisor; Sara West, Recreation Supervisor ll; Alison Meyers, Recreation Coordinator and Marisa Somenzi, Administrative Assistant. MATTERS FROM THE AUDIENCE: None Offered, 2. NEW BUSINESS: 2.1 REVIEW OF DRAFT YOUTH MASTER PLAN. CSD/Rose presented staff's report and recommended that the Commission review the draft Youth Master Plan, provide recommendations for changes, correction and additional suggestions for completion of the document by staff and the consultant and discuss possible recommendation for approval of the document to the City Council. CSD/Rose responded to VC/Lyons that the community interviews were conducted by the steering committee. Each steering committee member was requested to interview at least five individuals in the community who had an interest in youth. Most commissioners said they were concerned about and wanted improvement in the accuracy of the summarized information as it related to D.B. C/Chang said it was her impression from participating in the last leg of the Process the recommendations in the Youth Master Plan came about through collaborative of people within the steering committee and not necessarily frum statistics and information represented in the report provided by the consultant. FEBRUARY 7, 2005 PAGE 2 P&R COMMISSION STUDY SESSION C/Torres felt that by comparison the Sports Center Task Force information was very concrete and the Draft Youth Master Plan was very abstract. The problem with the Draft Youth Master Plan was that there were mixed expectations and in his opinion, the consultant had not offered the City very much substance to this point. However, if the resulting document was produced at the direction of the City it would be appropriate. CSD/Rose explained that the consultant was requested by the City to include as much scientific data as possible. The original proposal from the consultant did not include the telephone survey. if the intent of the draft were to build a foundation of information that would be used to make future decisions it would have to have a scientific foundation to balance the antidotal information that would be obtained through remaining processes. The original intent was to include information from the telephone survey and from the Search Institute Survey. As it happened there was a lack of participation in the Search Institute Survey. At the eleventh hour staff used the Healthy Kids Survey from both school districts and the only data incorporated was the data that matched from both districts. Chair/Grundy called for a survey of the Commissioners to determine whether they felt something could be done to render the draft report a viable document. VC/Lyons felt the Commission's goal was to come up with a viable document and asked that each Commissioner first speak to that issue. ACM/DeStefano suggested that the Commissioners might want to listen to staff's report about the foundational building blocks that led to the conclusions in the draft document. Chair/Grundy felt the Commissioners should first summarize their concerns to help CSD/Rose point. out areas that addressed those concerns. C/Liang felt that the City was moving from a Parks and Recs program to a Human Services type of program and wondered if the City had the budget to Promote the types of programs outlined in the draft plan? Does the California Healthy Kids Survey really pertain to the residents of D.B.? If the City of Claremont used a similar project how many years has their plan been in place and how successful has it been? His major concern was with the telephone data survey and language barriers that may have skewed the information collected in December 2003. With respect to Phase III containing the statement "increase D.B.'s ability to become a useful friendly community" he pointed out that the community is very diversified with English as a primary language of D.B. residents comprising about 46 percentof the City's Population and non-English speaking about 54 percent and wanted to know if the report considers language barriers of the diverse ethnic backgrounds? On the surface the plan looks good. However, some of the data and procedures are of concern to him. C/Torres felt the report fell so short of the City's needs that it would be FEBRUARY 7, 2005 PAGE 3 P&R COMMISSION STUDY SESSION difficult to approve the plan. In his opinion, the recommendations had no substance. To him a plan was a roadmap and this plan is so general in nature that it would not take a consultant's expertise to put together such a plan. He felt staff could have prepared a better plan and to him the City was ill served by the consultant's presentation. The document is replete with vague examples and it is misleading. In addition, the document is full of mistakes and sloppily written. In short, he does not believe the consultants did their job. If the goal was to bring together community members and develop consensus, did that happen, absolutely, and that is the good side of this matter. if the document provided a specific plan that could be implemented to meet specific goals the document would be a viable document. If staff believes this document is the next step in the process he would not be on board with that theory. Again, in his opinion the City paid too much for too little. C/Chang agreed with C/Torres that the document should not have cost the City so much money. The executive summary on strategy was compiled within groups of community individuals. A document that contains statistics that may or may not represent D.B. falls short. She would prefer to remove the statistics and move forward with the executive summary as a community tool wherein community leaders could bring forth recommendations. She felt it was not a good job by the consultants because the document was padded with unusable statistics. At this point, she did not know what to recommend and wanted to consider all input. VC/Lyons agreed with fellow commissioners. She felt that the data should be eliminated from the report and that all statements should be documented with statistics. Further, the document should reflect the challenges of the residents of D.B. and ail numbers should be compared to national and state norms. The report should be specific, not vague. The document should be Proofread and doubled checked with respect to statistics. Ultimately, that would be the consultant's job because they are presenting the final document for approval. If she cannot followthe document others will not be able to follow it. It may be correct but it does not make sense. Also, the document should contain conclusions that are very specific. She understood that this document was not the end -ail, be-all however, she would be surprised if the conclusions reached in the report were correct because the data is so flawed. Chair/Grundy also agreed with his fellow commissioners. He said he had too much respect for his fellow commissioners and for the City to allow everyone to continue to "bang their heads" on this. What he heard Commissioners say was that no one felt the City had gotten its money's worth, that no one felt the document could be called a "plan" and that some of the defects were so significant that remediation would not bring it in line with calling it a "plan." Chair/Grundy said he felt the way to move forward was to find some middle ground to accept the document in some fashions uch as calling it a "Youth Master Study" and allow for additional follow up. FEBRUARY 7, 2005 PAGE 4 P&R COMMISSION STUDY SESSION C/Torres felt that at the very least the document should provide a model for proceeding to consensus. He reiterated his feeling that as a salaried City employee Kim Crews had provided this information two years ago. The consultants included six websites that the City could research "at its leisure" in order to decide which collaborative model it should implement. To him the document was an embarrassment. One method for salvaging the current document would be to take the negatives and develop fixes. For example, do not declare that the City "needs a community collaborative model" but state recommendations for the model and use the websites in the appendix as examples for acquiring further education. CSD/Rose stated that the issue with the collaborative model was that the three governmental agencies, the two school districts and the City needed to decide how to staff the collaborative. Chair/Grundy asked if it was possible for the City to get remediation from the consultant that would include specific recommendations. RC/Meyers said that she attended the steering committee meetings for the entire 18 months and watched the process. When considering collaborative models it is not possible for a consultant to make a specific recommendation because the collaboratives have to determine how the model would fit into the group. She said she had recommendations that would be appropriate to present to the collaboratives but it would take the three entities to lead the process, that this was the purpose of the Youth Master Plan and the way that other Youth Master Plans such as the Claremont plan were written. CSD/Rose again explained that staff did not consider this a finished document. Staffs intent was to move forward to compile the annual work plan and collaborative model with buyoff by the two school districts and the City Council. The draft document would be a basic document to which other portions would be added to get to the point of having outcome based measurements that would be included in the document. RC/Meyers explained that the school districts have been involved in the process from day one and believe in this process -and understand that this document presents a foundation for moving forward. VC/Lyons asked if the soft conclusions came from accurate data? RC/Meyers responded that some of the soft data came as a result of the consultant's effort to make sure that certain individuals on the committee were heard. Chair/Grundy asked if staff required the Commission to do anything with this document in order for his department to proceed? CSD/Rose responded no. However, everything that develops from this point forward would be the basis for the Youth Master Plan and it would be difficult to come back to the Commission without agreement about the direction of the City. Commissioner Liang reiterated that he was concerned that the City was FEBRUARY 7, 2005 PAGE 5 P&R COMMISSION STUDY SESSION heading in a direction that was outside the purview of parks and recreation. In his opinion this was a culture shift that moved the City toward human services. CSD/Rose said that there was no way that D.B. could provide these services on its own and that is why a collaborative was formed and it is possible that the City may continue providing current programs and also become the focal point of this plan. CSD/Rose stated that the City had opportunities to be involved with collaboratives. For example, the Walnut Valley Unified School District was interested in an afternoon tutoring program and the City happens to run no - charge afternoon tutoring program at the Diamond Bar Center. The school district is interested in getting tutors from CalPoly. Pomona and making the service available throughout the community. It would be the City's intent to also include Pomona Unified School District in the program. He cited other examples that resulted in progress through the plan. Chair/Grundy said that although the Commission may not agree with the document its disagreement should not hold up the City's progress. C/Torres asked CSD/Rose if it would be bad for the City if the draft plan were not approved. VC/Lyons asked for CSD/Rose to elaborate on how it would be more difficult for staff if the draft plan were not adopted. CSD/Rose said it would ultimately be the City Council's decision whether to adopt the draft and that the City's goal was to have some sort of document go to the two school districts as well. He said that the document in its current form would not go to the school districts because there were too many holes and mistakes in it. VC/Lyons asked how much time and money would be required to fix the mistakes. RC/Meyers said she had been working on the document and Presented corrections based on the Commissioner's concerns as well as mistakes she and CSD/Rose had found. VC/Lyons said she expected better from professional consultants. She agreed with C/Torres that this document would not be acceptable for presentation even at a high school level. C/Torres pointed out that the prioritization charts were a compilation of cut and paste and sloppily done. The cumulative nature of the sloppiness and blatant errors gave him a bad feeling about the document. He felt a compilation of the Commissioners concerns should be given to the consultant and that the City should at the very least hold the consultant accountable for those items. Chair/Grundy said that if the consultant was unable= see their own mistakes and have to wait for the City to ask for corrections there was something wrong with the process. It was almost as if the consultant had not read the document. He felt that the consultant should prove to the City that the draft was a cohesive document and wanted obvious errors fixed. For the Commission and staff to spend time fixing obvious errors is ridiculous. FEBRUARY 7, 2005 PAGE 6 P&R COMMISSION STUDY SESSION C/Liang was skeptical about the consultant's ability to fix the document. C/Torres said he would approve the document if the consultant cleaned up the document and fixed the lists. He would also like for the consultant to put more substance into the recommendations. On the positive side the document revealed needs in the middle school age groups. He explained that his real concern on a going forward basis was that the consultant had failed to adequately prioritize her recommendations. RC/Meyers said that if she could have the Commissioners input by the end of the week she would work with the consultant next week and have the revised document ready for the March 24 meeting. Chair/Grundy assured staff that the Commission would buy into the going forward process. He asked that the City not recommend the consulting group. VC/Lyons asked if staff could provide tabs for the revised binder. She said she would not likely be present at the March 24 meeting. ADJOURNMENT: Upon motion by VC/Lyons, seconded by C/Torres and there being no further business before the Parks & Recreation Commission, Chair/Grundy adjourned the meeting at 8:15 p.m. :Respe �S bmitted, se, cretary Attest: